Universal Int'l
2004
5 Easy Pieces
About This Album
It's somehow fitting that when Scott Walker got the deluxe box treatment, its track selection and sequencing were idiosyncratic and a bit perverse, much like his career itself was. For this five-CD, 96-track package doesn't follow the usual box set format of a roughly chronological progression through career highlights. Each of the five discs is devoted to a "theme": "bedsit dramas," "songs about women," "songs from Europe and America," music used in or inspired by films, and an enigmatic one titled "This Is How You Disappear," apparently devoted to his less commercial work. There's much good music here, from his Walker Brothers days to his relatively little-heard (and uncommercial) recordings of the 1990s. What might vex even committed Scott Walker fans, however, is the mix of material from what most connoisseurs would consider his golden age -- his dark, orchestrated pop of the late '60s and early '70s -- with his far less celebrated (at least sales-wise) post-mid-'70s endeavors, where he went down ever more avant-garde avenues in disco, electronic music, and unfathomably tortured art songs. It's safe to say that many fans of his more pop guise have little to no interest in the experimental stuff, and that even champions of his later out-there ventures might find the mood swings inherent in combining both phases unsettling.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 3,4,13 and 15)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 5,7 and 8)

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Disc 3 (try tracks 3,4,6,7,11,12 and 20)

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Disc 4 (try tracks 1,2,6,7,10 and 12)

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Disc 5 (try tracks 3,9 and 15)

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